For $1.4 million, you can live in a sculpture next to Monterey Bay, with a "periscope."
"It was an experiment in space on my part," said Mary Gordon, a landscape architect who designed the house, a block from the ocean in La Selva Beach, Calif., for her husband and herself. "When you have curvilinear lines, they don’t really stop. It’s not like a square box. It was a piece of sculpture."
The curved lines and open floor plan were in part to disguise how small the house is, just 700 square feet, with one bedroom and one bathroom. But the bathroom is far from typical—with a custom-made 54-inch-diameter round soaking tub in front of bow windows.
A floating stainless steel and glass staircase leads from the living room and kitchen on the ground floor to the bedroom and bathroom, plus a tube-like protrusion with sea views. A ladder leads up further, to what Ms. Gordon dubbed the periscope, where she and her husband sometimes had dinner, with views of the bay.
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Ms. Gordon created a clay sculpture as a model. "I controlled every curve on it," she says. She hired men who made concrete boats to bring her model to life, because they knew how to work with curves. The house, which was completed in 1973, is made of ferroconcrete—cement over chicken wire, she said, adding, "You can’t make a dent in it."
Ms. Gordon bought the land from a neighbor who "had a normal house," she said. "She was angry with us. She didn’t get it, of course."
"I’ve always loved this home," said Nanette Schuster, listing agent with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. "It’s a beautiful blend of art and architecture right at the ocean bluff. I hate to call it a trophy, but no one else has one of these."
The house, which hit the market on Monday, has had only two owners, Ms. Gordon’s family and Cynthia Williams, who bought it as a pied-a-terre a little over five years ago.
Ms. Williams had been looking for a property in La Selva Beach and had noticed the house, set back from the street, near the beach. "I thought, I would love if that went up for sale, but the owner will never sell it."
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However, one day, her daughter called to say an unusual house was for sale in La Selva Beach, and Ms. Williams immediately knew it was the sculptural house. "I ran over there and bought it," she said. She paid $560,000. "I just fell in love with it. It’s an art object you can live in. I like collecting art, and it really appealed to me to have a piece of art I could live in, and it was right by the beach. It was private, behind a gate," she said.
But time had taken a toll. "It’s kind of like restoring a church—you can’t just get regular people to come in and do it. You have to find artisans willing to take the pains to do it right. It was a labor of love," Ms. Williams said.
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Ms. Williams had the entire place replastered, inside and out, with a smooth finish that was more modern. She put in a new kitchen, with luxury appliances from Wolf, Sub-Zero, Bosch and Bertazzoni. She put in the stainless steel and glass spiral staircase and revamped the bathroom.
"She spent a lot of money upgrading it, but not changing any of the lines," Ms. Gordon noted approvingly.
"This one-of-a-kind residential sculpture represents a rare opportunity to not merely gaze at a work of art but to live in one," said Ms. Schuster, the listing agent. "Within a block of the ocean bluff, the setting feels a world away, yet is conveniently located between Monterey and Santa Cruz."